


One Day We'll All Be Ghosts

by orphan_account



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of people return from death with no recollection of their passing; they return to their loved ones, only to find that life has continued on without them. Crossover between Les Revenants and Orphan Black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reanimation

**Author's Note:**

> "So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”  
> ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

Along the glassy lake surface floats a single fisherman’s boat. The man has been fishing since the early hours of the morning and now prepares his ice chest, accompanied by the gentle touch of the sun. His only catch lay with glassy eyes and a gaping mouth at his feet. Her gills, once spread wide into a silent scream, are now slanted like closed shudders. He is moving to retrieve the remaining line when something catches his eye.

  
A woman stands in the water near the bank. Her identity is masked by the bank of fog swirling in from town, but he catches the peculiar way she stands, at a slant, head cocked. Her hair is vibrant in the dulled screen of fog, like the bulb of a poppy sprouting from the barren soil. The thin stem of her body is hidden by her jacket, green, like the streaks of algae floating along the water.

The man is about to call out when something wet and cold brushes his hand. The man stands up, staggering, as the fish jumps along the edge. Its gills flash silver with each undulation in the hazy, morning light. He weakly attempts to grab the fist, but only touches its feathery tail as it jumps over the edge. It bends under the dark water, turning with new life, and swimming deep below.

  
He stares dumbly at feels his heart pound desperately against his chest. When he looks at the shore again, the woman is gone, slipped into the rolling fog.

~~ X ~~

  
The fluorescent sign of the Lakeside Pub flickers like a waning candle. Its owner, Siobhan Sadler, once dreamed of this place as her success story. She’s a handsome woman with broad shoulders and small, pale lips. Her eyes are liquid metal, gray, like aluminum, and she has a habit of raising her chin and looking down at others, she can make anyone feel small.

She opened the Lakeside Pub as a way to bring Dublin back with her, thinking she would pay off all her loans, and buy a nice house in town. But it turns out nobody wants to drive out of town to eat beside a creepy, polluted, and insect-infested lake. Now she rents the place for people like Tomas, grief counselors, in order to pay her bills. Apparently, its serene isolation is a perfect environment for the bereaved.

  
She recognizes two of the people who come, because they show up every week. One of them is a tall woman with blonde, curly hair. She never says more than her name, Delphine Cormier, and instead leans back into her chair and watches the others speak with wide, doe-like eyes. Sometimes she turns to smile at her friend, a faded smile, like the smear of stain.

  
Her friend is at least a head shorter than Delphine, but she is twice as energetic. She walks to her seat on the balls of her feet and sits down with her legs crossed and her entangled hands trapped between her thighs. An anxious thing, she glances around the room, at every face, as if she were afraid of recognizing someone. Her lips are pink and small like the sliver of a salmon tail breaching the water.

  
“Alison, why don’t we start with you,” Tomas says, gesturing to the shorter woman with clasped hands.

  
“Oh! Well, let’s see,” she starts, and smiles at the group as she touches her lips. She always spoke like this, fluffing each sentence with non-essentials, wasting time. “Last week was her birthday, and that was hard,” Alison pauses, glancing at each member as they make empathetic groans, “But it was easier than last year,” she says with a close-lipped smile, short and accented.

  
“Good. What made it easier, you think?”

  
Alison fidgets, and cocks her head. She considers telling them just how easy it was, gripping the fifth travel-sized bottle of vodka.  
“Time,” she says and gives another quick smile.

“Delphine? Would you care to speak up this time? As you can see from Alison, it can be truly rewarding.”

  
Delphine smiles vaguely and shakes her head. Behind her, the bay window reveals a thickening fog which filters the remaining sunlight into a gray light.

The fog rolls in like a wave and screens the window like white drape; in the haze, the silhouette of a girl sits with her back facing the pub. She wears a puffy white beanie, but Siobhan can see the ringlets of hair that cascades down her back. Siobhan leans forward with squinted eyes to see better when suddenly the fog retreats once again, and takes the girl with it.

  
“Is something wrong, Mrs. S?” asks Delphine, having seen Siobhan react.

  
“No, it’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

  
~~ X ~~

  
The mirror is old and cracked and hangs on a hook by the door. Black spots sit in the mirror where her eyes should be, forcing her to crouch to finish her make-up; they are normal apparently, the black spots, and occur when moisture gets under the glass, she knows this, but they still freak her out.

She should just replace the mirror—there’s nothing keeping her from throwing it out—and she has often forced it from the wall in a wave of frustration, but it always finds its way back on the hook, safe and sound.

She twists the mascara head slowly and crouches below the black spots to apply another layer, but the make-up is wearing thin, almost empty. Cursing under her breath, she throws the bottle away and listens to its dull thud, and the following silence. Just have to buy another one, she thinks.

  
“Delphine?”

She turns to the door with a scowl. Looking through the peep hole, she finds a petite woman with dreadlocks tied in a bun peeking up at her.

The woman wears elegance like a fragrance with a gold bracelet complementing her necklace; her slick dress is hidden partially by her red petticoat, vibrant, like the leaves of a maple tree in fall.

Leaning into the door, she presses her cheek and her hand against the varnished wood and closes her eyes. “Delphine, please let me in. I’m so tired,” she murmurs. “Delphine?” She starts again, moving her head. “I know you’re in there, open up.” Her balled fists rap on the door gently, but insistently.

  
“Um—she’s not here,” she says. The woman’s face snaps to the peephole. Her eyes have an unfocused sheen to them, but her voice is clear.  
“Who are you? Where is Delphine?” She stumbles back and stares hard at the door. Then she is flush against it with pounding fists. Her voice is panicked, “Who are you? Who are you? _Who the hell are you_?!”

  
Sarah opens jerks the door open and watches as the woman stumbles back, squinting.

  
“I live here—who the fuck are you?”

  
The woman gapes for a moment and her face flushes beet red. She looks behind her and folds her hands over her hair. She looks again at the door, at the numbers carved in the gold plate, 302.

  
“Am I in the wrong building?” She says to no one, and turns in a circle. She sways on her feet, losing her grip.

  
Sarah sighs, considers closing the door, but then curses under her breath.

  
“I think she lived here before me,”

  
The woman turns back with a furrowed brow and shakes her head.

  
“Did you know her? Did she mention me? Cosima Niehaus.”

  
“No, I never spoke to her.”

  
“How did she move so quickly? Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

  
“No clue,” Sarah deadpans, and starts closing the door, “Good luck.”

  
“Wait!” Cosima lurches to the door and presses her weight against it, “Please, you have to tell me—,”

  
“Fuck off!”

  
Sarah slams the door closed and heaves behind it for a moment before looking again through the peephole. Cosima holds herself up at the knees and takes deep breaths, a learned technique.

  
“What is happening?” She whispers before leaning against the wall. Pressing the heels of hands into her eyes, she groans and leans forward, counting the minutes. “What is happening…,” she whispers again, her voice slick with tears.

  
Sarah cracks the door open an inch and sees Cosima perk up instantly.

  
“I hear she works at the hospital now,” she says.

  
“Thank you,” she whispers, and smiles. She stands up, blinks a few times, sways, and then looks at Sarah. “Sorry, and thank you again,” she says and cocks her head, making her dreads fall to one side. The familiarity of the gesture makes Sarah’s heart sink. With a sigh, she closes the door with a soft click.

  
“Now leave me alone,” she whispers to herself.


	2. Sarah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All my friends are talking about leaving, about leaving  
> But all my friends are standing in their graves."

**Nine Years Ago**

Red-skinned sequoia trees stand along the outskirts of town like ancient statues, faceless and solemn, with pointed fingers interweaving together into a wall. The stumps of their lanky children stand like tombstones beside their mothers, from which they once sprouted with youthful optimism. Their bones remain, kept together with nails and climbing ivy, in the shape of a home.

Amelia stands in her kitchen, cleaning three plates. Her hands knead an old sponge, working the steaming water into the corpse until it is soft and supple once again. She then squeezes all the water from it and begins rubbing methodic circles into the plates; her eyes look out the fog-tinted window. There is a loud crash followed by a quieter curse, and Sarah storms into the kitchen quickly, holding a broken mirror. She gently places it on the table, and glances at Amelia.

“Ay, I’m going to the pub.”

Without turning to look at her, Amelia turns the faucet off and cuts in before Sarah can leave the house.

“What happened to the mirror?” she asks. Behind her, Sarah sighs and closes the door with a soft _click_ but doesn’t take her hand off the silver doorknob.

“I might’ve dropped it,” she mutters, “but I’m gonna buy a new one on my way back.”

“Bring Helena with you,” she replies, finally turning around. Her brown eyes hang in deep, purple-black pouches.

“Mum, no. Seriously,” Sarah says, shaking her head. She hates the way people look at Helena, their eyes glowing, mouths whispering, as they check for resemblance, and then check again.

“She just wants to feel included.”

“Everybody thinks she’s a total loon,” 

“Only because you let them,” says Amelia with just enough bite to set Sarah back a step. The room is enveloped in silence for a moment and Sarah grips the silver doorknob, finding her distorted reflection looking back at her.

From the other side of the cabin drifts in a voice, distant and soft, as though said in a trance. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Both Sarah and Amelia look down the hall, and then back at each other.  

“Nothing,” mutters Sarah, her eyes fixed upon Amelia, “You’re coming with me.”

She turns around and slams the door behind her, sending reverberations through the walls of the house. Helena stares at the closed door with a blank expression and slowly cocks her head to the side.

The body wakes up early. The body can be heard stiffly pacing the room in the blue-black dawn, but her soul takes time. Her soul rises like smoke from a hearth in the late morning, languish and sweet; she is sweet then, smiling gently.

Amelia smiles at Helena and gestures for her to get ready, watching as the woman pivots on her heel and disappears into the dark room. In the third drawer of a wooden dresser, there is a sterling silver comb with carved initials, H.M. at the base. She turns the comb over in her cracked hands and strokes the smooth surface like a stone, warming it up as she waits.

A minute later, Helena reappears in her favorite green coat and combat boots tied over her jeans; Amelia picks a blonde curl from the mess and holds it between her pointer finger and thumb, twisting it under the dim light. Then, she lets a smile roll over her lips like bread dough and drops her hand.

“You’ll need a haircut soon,” she murmurs and places the teeth of the comb near the part of her hair. She pushes the teeth down slowly, past the heavy curls and unweaving the tangled hair. Helena hums vaguely as Amelia combs her hair and tilts her face to the door. Her eyes burrow into the wood, imagining her sister on the other side, standing with arms crossed, probably cursing. The skin on the back of her neck rises into bumps when Amelia runs her hand through her hair.

“Stop,” she says and walks out of the house without saying goodbye.

Alone again, the woman turns back to the kitchen and stacks the three plates on top of each other. The plates chitter in her hands as she slides them into the redwood cabinet above the sink wherein they sit in the dark, silently waiting for another day.

**Present Day**

Framed pictures hang on the wall, gold-trimmed and glossy. Within the glass, two people drape around each other like clay models, cold and stiff, with pearly smiles painted on their blank faces.

“Alison,”

She tears her eyes from the portrait to look at the man sitting across from her. Donnie crouches over his plate with both his elbows leaning on the table. His knife and fork are gripped in each hand like weapons. His beer belly pushes into the ledge of the dining table. “Aren’t you hungry?” He asks. A smile flitters across her cheeks like a bird against the walls of its cage.

“I’m feeling a little unwell,” she murmurs and knits her hands together on her lap. He frowns at her in a way that could either be concern or annoyance. Probably annoyance.

“Okay, but don’t waste it,” he says, and crouches over his plate once again.

She hates the way he scrapes the plate with his fork, shoveling morsels into his mouth. It screams as he brings the metal across it again and again. Her eyes fade away from the dining table and search the pictures once again. A picture she painted last year hangs on the wall, pears in a bowl. She tried to recreate the bowl Beth gave her when they first became friends. She said she didn’t know what else to bring, and Alison had laughed too loud, too bright. _Anything but that_ , she said hysterically, hand on her chest, with her manners pinned under the awkward glass bowl of pears. Beth pressed her teeth against her bottom lip to hide the smile curling into her rosy cheeks. Then, she shoved Alison off the table.

Beth was enigmatic like that. She was a paradox of characteristics: demure and aggressive, feminine and masculine, timid and outgoing. She was a puzzle whose pieces seemed to never fit until you turned them over in your hands a few times, learned the edges and curves. Putting Beth together was a dance of prying forward steps and relenting jumps back; she craved it desperately.

Now all she can see are those gaping holes, of pieces left unfound; she looks for them still in the ghostly voice mails on her phone, in the crumpled receipts at the bottom of her purse, and at the bottom of a Smirnoff bottle.  

~~X ~~

Cooped up in her office, Delphine turns the endless pages of her patient’s file. The dry pages rub against her fingertips and fill the room with sibilance. The sound imitates the ocean collapsing into the warmed beach like the arms of a lover. _Shh, shh_. She can transform this box into a beach of infinite waves, _shh, shh_ , just like before. Her hand massages the back of her head, fingers rippling, expanding and receding. She remembers the salt-spray wetting her cheek, the rush of the wind, blood coursing to her cheeks, their hands interwoven like a knot, “ _Delphine_.”

She startles in her seat, heart pounding wild, and feels circles of sweat beginning to form under her arms. A nurse stands in the doorway and tries again, “Dr. Cormier?” She clasps a hand to her chest and takes a deep breath through her nose. _1,2,3…Release_.

“What is it?” She asks.

“Dr. Leekie wants to see you.”

Aldous Leekie was once considered a handsome man, charming even, with blonde hair slicked back and a crooked smile; his eyes dazzled like water under the sun. But now he stands with the looming posture of the grim reaper, having replaced his graying hair with the bald, polished scalp of a baby, and his yellowing teeth with bleached pearls. He stands against the current of natural degradation. Even so, the years have layered over Dr. Leekie like sediment at the bottom of a river and now they sit on his face, wrinkles gaping like canyons.

Before Aldous became “Dr. Leekie,” he was considered the throbbing heart of this town. He was swept into adulthood with devastating intelligence and a bounding ambition. Evidence of this man remains in the half-torn articles sutured to a post by a single staple, in the washed-out and tortured picture stuck on the billboard like a head at the stake.

He dreamed of leading his town into a revolutionized world, a better world, a world that now exists in the shadowy corner of every home and in the whispers of passerby.

He stands like an effigy in the very hospital that bore his shame.

“Ah, Dr. Cormier, thank you for seeing me,” he says with a smile.

“Yes,” she murmurs, returning a vague smile.

“I want you to check our patient, Mrs. Chen, into the birthing center down the street. She is breaching her ninth month and I want you to represent the hospital as her supervisor.”

“She won’t be delivering here?” She asks innocently enough. Dr. Leekie looks at her with puzzled eyes, and then, slightly narrowed. After a moment, he cocks his head and chuckles lowly.

“That’s right, you’re new here. You should know, all deliveries are located at the birth center unless intervention is deemed necessary by a doctor, but that is rarely necessary.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s been this way for nearly thirty years,” he says gently, looking at her with his hands clasped in front of him; his lips are smiling but his eyes are deep-set wells, cold and distant, nearly bottomless. “Any more questions, Dr. Cormier?”

She averts her eyes under such a glare.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Not at all,” he says cheerily, his voice swinging back like the weight of a pendulum, “Dreary is a life without curiosity, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You may return to work now,” he says, handing her Mrs. Chen’s folder.

“Is that all?” She asks, looking at the folder in her hands. He could have slipped it into her inbox.

“That’s all,” he murmurs, smiling coldly, and dismisses himself. His white coattail trails behind him, waving goodbye as he enters his office. 

She walks back with a sigh and slips the folder into her inbox—asking a doctor to accompany a pregnant woman at the birth center is like asking a police officer to sit in the passenger seat during a bust.

When her eyes find her office door, she finds that it is slightly ajar.

 Her fingertips touch the cold metal knob as the gentle _click_ of the door closing plays back in her head.

She enters slowly, widening the gap, and roves her eyes like a snake around the room, looking for signs of upturned paper and stolen files. She doesn’t notice the way her chair is turned away from the door. The pale arm lying on the black leather arm rest also goes unseen.

 It’s the black-rimmed glasses, shaped like two clear camel humps, spinning lazily between two maroon-painted fingers that catch her eyes. Her heart catches on those glasses, not sure whether to constrict with rage or burst, blood swelling like tears.

From behind that chair comes a familiar voice, half-smiling and deep, full of longing and shy seduction. It comes at her like a tsunami, and she can feel it barrel over her head.

It’s only when she’s locked herself in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid with arms wrapped around her legs that the words reach her; every word is a successive wave that floods the crevices of her brain, drowning her: “Since when did you need my glasses, Doctor?”

~~ X ~~

It is late afternoon when Helena reaches the cabin and she swings around the bulking redwood bodies, calling softly for her sister. When no one answers, she touches the silver doorknob and spreads her palm against it. She likes the smooth consistency of silver and its unchanging strength. Her fingers curl around the knob and she scratches the side of it with her thumbnail; the sound is unpleasant but nothing seeps under the nail or comes away, weak with rot.

Above the doorknob, there is a rusted chain wrapped around the deadbolt, locked again with another bolt requiring a key. Those go untouched, but she considers grabbing the shovel leaning against the side of the house.

“Why is the door locked, Sarah?” There is a beat of silence, and she turns the knob wildly. “Is this one of your jokes?”

Her cheeks flush with rage and she steps back from the door, clenching her fists. She thinks about the shovel again and considers splintering the door, piercing the wood with each thrust, and then burning it; let the fire lick the flesh and consume, tearing away piece by piece, churning out smoke— _but this could be a funny trick_. Her eyes dart to the fence and she hoists herself up; she doesn’t want to hurt her sister’s feelings after all.

This could all be very funny, she wouldn’t really know.

The house smells empty, the wood rotting. Gooseflesh bubbles on the back of her neck as she enters the abandoned kitchen, her hands trailing along the wall. “Mum?”

The following silence churns her stomach with nausea and she has to lean against the wall to stabilize her. Upon the immediate pressure, her fingertips bend the wet, rotted wood and enter knuckle-deep into the wood. From within, feather-soft antennae and spindly legs explore the fleshy deposit of her captured fingers.

She screams and rips her hand from the wall, trembling weakly. Sweat beads along her forehead and circles under her arms as she stumbles from the old house. Her hands clench and unclench viciously as she reimagines the bugs crawling under her fingertips and into her skin; they crawl up her veins like ants on a vine and infest the flesh of her brain, eating away the bloody meat.

 The blood rushes to her chest and leaves her knees weak and wobbly, but she keeps walking. All but one thought drains from her mind: _Find Sarah_. Her posture straightens and she walks towards town like a programmed machine.

Find Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.

 


	3. Weighty Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I got out of bed today, swear to God I couldn't see my face  
> I got out of bed today staring at a ghost  
> Who forgot to float away, didn't have all that much to say” – Wintersleep, Weighty Ghost
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter because it was very difficult to write. I really kicked my ass in gear to get it done. HUGE thanks to those of you who comment/kudos. You have no idea how much it motivated me

**Nine Years Ago**

Cigarette smoke from the morning customers moves glacially towards the door and creates a gloomy aureole around the open door from which Sarah enters. The heavy thud of her boots announces her presence as she slides her I.D. along the counter and fixes Siobhan with a softened glare (the slow erosion of contempt). Layers of dark make-up hide her light hazel eyes with a _partially_ intentional impression of promiscuity but Siobhan thinks, mostly, she just doesn’t know how to wear make-up.

Half of her hair is plaited against her head while the other half is wild and long over her shoulder. Siobhan knows this look, as well as the role that comes with it, for every town has a loser just as every cigarette has an ashy end that clings to the burning rim before being smothered.

Sarah wears the archetype well and even gives it her own flare, a little stamp of uniqueness, within the boundaries allowed to her. It’s a fun role, smoking weed behind the bleachers and skipping class, but (perhaps harder to notice) bitterness smolders right under the surface. Thoughts coil like smoke behind her glassy eyes, whispering, _just give me a chance_.

“Reservation for Manning for the pool table in the back,” she says with a smirk curling at her lip.

“The table’s already taken. Poor luck.”

“Piss off,” she says, “Get me two cues and the bucket o’ balls.”

“See for yourself. I’m fresh out.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, turns around, and reclines into the counter. In the back of the room, a girl stands at the pool table with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes are sharp on the scattered arrangement of balls; she leans over the green felt with the cue rocking between her fingers.

“I know her,” Sarah mutters under her breath, “Congrats, S, you actually have a customer for once. I’m kind of jealous.”

“Don’t feel too bad, she doesn’t waste half as much money as you.”

Sarah glances back and winks before pushing off the counter; she wades through the haze of smoke tinted yellow by the dull overhead lights towards Elizabeth Childs.

A minute later, the smoke pulses and brings a woman to the counter. At once Siobhan pegs her as foreign for the curly blonde hair and the mid-waist green jacket. In terms of appearance, this town moves in one direction: brown hair, brown eyes, broad jaw, and pale skin. Perhaps it’s the suffocating nature of a small town that leads women to seek late-night petting sessions combined with the already overabundance of brown eyed, brown-haired men. Perhaps blonde hair and blue eyes became dubious qualities to copulate with after Leekie’s fatal fall from grace.

The woman’s slackened hands recede into her front pockets and her shoulders bend forward into a half-crouch. She isn’t foreign, Siobhan decides as she finds the tell-tale brown roots glinting beneath her blonde curls. The woman treads around the room carefully and peers through the haze in search of something, or someone. 

“What can I do for you?” Siobhan prompts gently.

She stiffens at the sound and fixes Siobhan with a blank stare. Under her eyes lay two curved lines that bow deep into her cheekbones like symmetrical imprints of a disembodied and ghostly smile. Her lips twitch to mirror the smiles under her eyes and the effect is stifling: even the cloud-like haze is suppressed to the floor.

“Where is my sestra?”

Siobhan frowns and leans forward, wondering if she heard the woman correctly. _Sestra_?

“Do you mean your sister?”

For a time, the woman acts as though she didn’t hear the question; she remains uncomfortably still and stares unblinkingly at Siobhan. The smile glistens like a piece of plastic rolled over her skin.

“Yes,” she murmurs finally. Her hands slowly slide out of her pockets and tug at her hood until the fur-lining covers her face. The ghostly smiles are dimmed to obscurity, but her chapped lips hold their strange form.

“Try the back,” Siobhan whispers. She suddenly feels as though talking any louder would be inappropriate, as if she were intruding on a solemn affair that required utter silence. They both stare into the back room.

The game of pool continues in solitude despite Sarah’s presence on the opposing table with arms crossed glumly over her chest. Beth leans over the green felt with sharp eyes and pursed lips, focuses, and sends the cue ball flying into a solid color with a crisp _click_.

Beth is a lean woman, suitably toned, with small hands that she usually keeps balled up in fists at her sides or entwined behind her back. Over the years, she has crafted a sense of self that is hardened and slighting to people like Sarah while sarcastic and self-deprecating to anyone else. It’s the best shield she’s ever had but she dreams about wearing something real one day.

“Thank you,” the woman murmurs.                

Light-footedly, she pads to the back of the room without a sound, rests her cheek on Sarah’s shoulder, and is quickly shoved away.

Siobhan watches her stiff back and her motionless arms and thinks: _So, this is the infamous Helena Manning._

A cold draft of tension had grown between the sisters without explanation, she thought, until she noticed Beth Child’s sly eyes burning into the back of Sarah’s head. Clearly there was a touch of shame coloring their relationship, and if Siobhan could notice Beth’s judgment then so could anyone.

After the quick shove, Helena rocks back a step for balance and stares at Beth with eyes that might have been blank if not for the spark of anger as fleeting as though it had been caused by the strike of two stones. 

When Beth returns to her game, Helena makes her final move by gradually raising her arms from her side and contracting her fingers in an air-grab reminiscent of a child reaching for her mother, which Sarah chooses to ignore. Eventually, Helena drops her arms limply at her sides and trains her eyes on the pool table. She would withhold all signs of life for the rest of the day.

This action—her final reach for a connection—would germinate in Siobhan’s mind years later and even bloom, with sudden clarity, at times when the town’s opinions were at their darkest: Hidden somewhere behind Helena’s expressionless eyes was a deep feeling of love conjoined with Sarah.  

Obviously the town held their own opinions, and made no effort to hide them. Hasty labels like ‘ _psychopath,’_ ‘ _sociopath,_ ’ and ‘ _lunatic,’_ were cast onto her without any consideration of their definition or what they meant expressly for Helena. 

To most people, Helena is no more than an enigmatic story without a source. There was never a famous parade of horror that bore the town’s mistrust in her as there was with Leekie; in fact, very few people have actually met her, and those who have don’t claim witness to any violent abnormalities. (She’s never sucked the meat off a dead squirrel, as stories claim). Siobhan has considered every possible reason for the town’s fascination with Helena, but ultimately only one variable kept Helena from being any normal recluse in the woods, and that was Sarah.

 If Helena were alone, her occasional venture into town would be met with the same distant ignorance given to a begging homeless man. Since they were raised together, the common belief is that they should be similar, and so Sarah acts as a comparison to Helena.

Every brooding moment in Sarah’s life has been scrutinized with the knowledge that there is more to her lonely sulking, to the dark make-up she wears, and the crinkled water bottle of vodka she smuggles with her. While Sarah goes to school, another girl is hidden away in the woods as though she doesn’t exist. And so, Helena is personified in the lurking shadow Sarah lugs around, in the dark circles under her eyes, and in every curling sneer.   

Together, Helena and Sarah create a chill in the town similar to the foreboding prickle of a spider web against skin, promising a predator yet to be seen.   

**Present Day**

_Maybe I should go back to work_.

This thought has been revolving in Alison’s head for the past nine years without any real desire to actually do it, since she was only ever passionate about kinesiology when its legitimacy as a career was called into question, but more as a way to eclipse the maddening boredom that is her life. As long as an escape route exists, she is able to manage another day.

When the phone rings she checks the caller I.D. with a quick smile, waits for the third tone, and picks up with an impatient and rushed, _Hello_?

“Alison? I need you to come get me, I’m at the hospital.”

A beat of silence falls as Alison processes the voice: forcedly slow with a high-pitched tremble. At once Alison thinks, _panic attack_ , and feels a chill in her gut. She jumps up, grabs the car keys and her sweater, turns off the lights, and counts the hours she has before having to pick up Gemma and Oscar. She has plenty of time. Despite her hurried steps outside the house, she stills her voice to appear nonplussed. Being unemotional in her mind equated strength and was an essential key to her perfect image. 

“How far is the Hospital? I was just on my way out for chores, you know how busy I am, but I guess—,”

“ _Please_ , Alison. It’s…,” there is a pause, and the voice drops an octave lower, “It’s about Cosima.”

The mention of _her_ name creates a black hole in Alison’s mind, obliterating her faithful act at busyness and all the breath sitting in her lungs. She runs to the car, sucking in enough air to gasp out her only response.

“I’m on my way.”

**~~ X ~~**

The last time this happened, she was finishing her dissertation and a shadow crossed her vision from the opposing chair. The hairs on the back of her neck raised as she leveled her eyes slowly to the familiar pair of hazel eyes flecked with green—so unlike the dull, red-rimmed eyes she’d last seen, fixed on nothing and no one in particular.

She never spoke, but her lips curled into her old smirk that wound her heart like an old music box. In that moment, the book cases and plush couches created a membrane around Delphine that protected her from the rest of the world and allowed her to look unabashedly at Cosima.

Her hands were stiff and unmoving on the dark oak table (as they never would have been in life), a paper-thin hospital sheet was wrapped around her body as if she had simply picked herself up from the soiled cot and went straight to this library, and she smiled as if this was her plan all along. Even with the throbbing memory of her waxy dead flesh caked with the make-up of a stranger, violet rouge and charcoal eye shadow, and of her swollen body stuffed into clothes that once looked elegant on her.

Even knowing that she was decaying in the ground in a position deemed appropriate by other people didn’t matter, because she felt that this moment was true and that all her grief was no more than a nightmare about to end.

That moment was a bright and fleeting prelude to the darkest year of her life.

“ _Delphine_ ,” calls the voice, “Talk to me, Delphine.”

The ghost (she doesn’t know what else to call it) paces outside the bathroom stall and creates an interesting echo as her heeled-shoes click against the linoleum; a detail she figured to be too extravagant for her brain to create. Delphine sits on the closed toilet lid with her elbows digging into her bouncing knees and her chin cupped in her hands. She hides in a single stall bathroom and stares at the wedge of space allowed by the locked door which flickers from the shadow pacing outside.

Dread compresses in her stomach like a ball of lead and gives her intestines a deep chill.

 _I can’t survive another relapse_ , she thinks, and feels surprisingly calmed by the fact. It was irrefutable and firm like the bloodless look of death—at least she wouldn’t be disappointing anyone, she tried to move on and her mind betrayed her. It wasn’t her fault.

When it speaks again, its voice is indignant and tinged with hurt.

“You move without telling me. No warning, no call, no note, _nothing_ —you just disappeared. How could you do that to me?”

 “How does it feel? Being abandoned,” She muses out loud before she can stop herself. 

The only response she receives is a long gap of silence. Maybe she left, but most likely her brain couldn’t think of a response. One symptom of her “break” was that her version of Cosima could only be as creative, challenging, passionate, and intelligent as her own brain; an effect that she eventually used to discern reality. The downside was that she acted as her own antagonist and held incredibly low standards for what she considered to be real.

She shouldn’t have locked herself in the bathroom—acting as though she was real—and she definitely should not have spoken to Cosima. This was a major offence against her resolve, and she can already feel its effect on her mind.

Cosima feels like a true person behind that door with a presence as tangible as the floor beneath their feet. With sudden terrible clarity, she knows that the life she’s worked to create for the past five years has been totally and inescapably unraveled.   

**~~ X ~~**

The white corridors are abundant with rolling food carts, pacing doctors in long lab coats, and wheelchairs escorting tired patients. Every sound is amplified: the paper of a patient’s file rustles from the two doctors rifling through it and their discussion fills the room with a constant babble. The corridors are bustling with life, but Alison knows better—she’s a personal witness to the stifling silence in the cubicles.

The cubicles are cardboard cut-outs of the “ideal care” that the Hospital claims to maintain. Isolated from family and friends, patients are expected to survive the monotonic whirring and beeping of their mechanical company. Plastic stickers and needles are stuck in every place possible with names thrown around without explanation, ECG, EEG, intravenous therapy.

If only doctors would bring some of this liveliness in with them to the cubicles; maybe then fewer people would die on them.

Alison interlaces her hands in front of her and walks at a quick pace past each doctor, sending them quick smiles every time one of them glances at her. She turns onto an empty corridor, finds the office of Dr. Cormier empty, and continues down the hall until she sees a sign pointing to the restrooms. _Of course!_

She turns to the right and sees the women’s bathroom at the end. A woman leans against the opposing wall apparently waiting for the restroom so Alison paces to the door and gives an accented knock.

“Delphine, are you there?” She waits for a moment and adds, “It’s me, Alison.”

“Mille fois merci.”

Footsteps approach the door and Alison can hear Delphine fumble with the turn lock. _Poor thing must be shaking like a leaf_ , she thinks, just as the woman from behind approaches her. She gives a gentle tap on the shoulder and waves awkwardly from the wrist.

“Hi, sorry, but how do you know her?”

The woman flashes a pretty smile, clearly trying to be non-threatening, but the effect is immediate as Delphine reapplies the lock on the door. The sound acts as an eerie warning, like the resolute _click_ of a revolver’s hammer. Alison looks at the stranger with new attention and finds the tightly-coiled dreadlocks pulled back into a bun and the black-rimmed glasses. Very few pictures of Cosima survived that year of struggle—when she used to appear in places she didn’t belong—and the few that remained were stored at the bottom of boxes, but Alison had managed to find one picture in an old newspaper clipping. She had searched the internet archives for obituaries in 2009 and found her black-and-white face smiling at her.

 It had been strange staring into the greyscale pixels that make up the eyes of someone who once lived.

That feeling has been entirely eclipsed by this moment, staring into the red-rimmed and wet eyes of that same corpse.

When Cosima takes a step forward, Alison takes an unconscious step back. Her stomach wavers and drops like an elevator cut from the cord.

“Stay back,” she whispers, blinking rapidly. She considers pushing the woman away and pulling over some cover story. She could shake her head, pivot mechanically, knock on the door as she did before, and yell out that some no-good doppelganger decided to prey on the bereaved. Could it be that simple?

 It would calm Delphine considerably knowing she had been tricked as well, but something about this person makes her impossible to brush away. Something about the way she stands, a glimmer in her eyes perhaps, makes her believe that she is Cosima. _But that’s impossible_.

Alison eyes Cosima from head to toe and crosses her arms; she’s beginning to understand why Delphine was so shaken—it’s nearly impossible to refute something when they’re standing right in front of you.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” Cosima prods quietly. Her hand brushes Alison’s shoulder, but is quickly knocked away by a fierce swipe of Alison’s hand.  

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps, placing her hand safely on her cheek. She can feel it trembling against her skin.

“What’s happening?” Delphine whispers from behind the door, and slowly unlocks the door, but Alison slams it closed. Then she takes out a notepad and a pen, bites off the plastic cap, and begins scribbling furiously. The end of the pen has a pink piece of fluff moving angrily in the air.

She tears off the piece of paper and shoves it into Cosima’s chest, making her gasp in surprise.

“That has an address and my phone number. Go there now and call me when you’re done. If you don’t, you’ll never see Delphine again.”

**~~X~~**

“Scotch, no ice,” mutters a customer as they slip onto the stool. The chair squeaks as the person glances around the room vaguely with a heavy sigh. Perhaps it’s that air-headed counselor getting to her head, but she can’t help but sense heaviness in their spirit, or maybe spirit isn’t the right word; either way, they dragged in a few rain clouds in with them.

“Sure, love.”

A quiet scoff sounds behind her back that she chooses to ignore as she pulls out a freshly-cleaned glass. In past years, she may have spit in their glass and looked them straight in the eye as she handed it to them, but she’s grown old and she can’t afford to piss off any new customers. The top of the decanter is opaque glass with a spiral groove design and she places it on the side to pour in a half cup of Scotch.

When she turns around, she drops her jaw with a quiet _pop_ as she looks into the heavy-lidded (and aged) eyes of Sarah Manning.

“Been a long time,” Sarah mutters, leaning in to take the glass hanging in Siobhan’s grip.

“Nine years,” Siobhan replies, and fixes Sarah with a hard look, “I was beginning to think you’d died.”

That was a lie; she devotedly follows Sarah’s life through newspaper clippings, fragments of stories mumbled through drunken lips, the occasional news report, and even the grief counseling group.

The latter told her of the untimely loss of Amelia Manning, adoptive mother and devout hermit. The griever was a dark-skinned woman with a broad face and speckled cheeks who appeared several years ago, half-an-hour deep into the counseling group.She talked in a strong but brisk voice and often stopped to give a slow shake of her head. “ _We were inseparable as children, but you know how life goes, we barely knew each other near the end. I only just found out today, she’s dead. God knows how long she’s been rotting out there, all alone. I guess the doctors are figuring it out, but I don’t wish to know. Worse, she killed herself all alone in those woods, Oh God_ ,” she stopped and gave a bitter, humorless laugh, “ _I don’t know where her supposed children were_.”

“The place looks like shit,” says Sarah, casting a nonchalant glance over the empty space.

She tilts the glass in the dim yellow light, watching as the golden dregs swirl over her eyes. “Did you sell everything but the liquor?”

“It’s all in the back. I rent the place out for _Helping Hand_ in the evenings,” Siobhan replies.

Placing the glass on the counter, Sarah glances up with a quirked head and a raised brow. _She hasn’t changed that much_ , Siobhan thinks warmly and looks at the smudged mascara below her eyes; _neither has her make-up_.

“You mean those bible-thumping twats?”  

“They’re the only ones paying the bills around here.”

She scoffs again puts her lip under the rim of her glass, tilts her head back, and finishes her drink.  After a few minutes of fumbling with her jean pockets, she manages to pull out a crumpled five-dollar bill and four quarters. She drops the contents on the counter with a crooked smile. Siobhan smiles wryly and pours her another drink.

“I guess I’m glad you’re doing fine,” Sarah mumbles, looking at the bottom of her glass.

“I’m not bad, but how are you?”

“Fine.”

“I heard the unfortunate news about…,” Siobhan trails off, unsure of how to continue.

Meanwhile, Sarah snaps to attention. Perhaps it’s the dark-lit room, or the unnatural hardness of her face, but she looks anxious; her lips have pressed into a straight line and now look white and bloodless from the pressure.

“What?”

“Well, Amelia,” she says, and Sarah immediately relaxes.

“That was a long time ago, too,” she says into the mouth of her drink and the side of the glass fogs up with her breath. 

Siobhan folds her hands on the counter and thinks about what she just saw. Obviously she struck a nerve, but not for mentioning Amelia.

“How’s Helena taking it?”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Why do you want to know?” Sarah asks, her voice is as cold as it gets.

“Why wouldn't I want to know?,” Siobhan continues with the same icy voice. She doesn't like any authoritative tone directed at her, and especially not from Sarah. Ever since she was a kid, she’s impulsively reacted to intimidation however she deems fit. Which usually resulted in her being the bloodied and battered loner when she was young. Maybe that’s why she likes Sarah so much.

“She’s none of your concern.”

Nobody says anything again for a long time. Siobhan rubs an old rag in circles and pretends to be nonchalant while Sarah stares distantly at the other side of the bar. The bar feels empty again, as if Sarah had already paid her bill and sauntered out of the bar to disappear once again.

Siobhan made a mistake in pushing her for more information and now she feels like an overbearing freak who’s attempted to break into the life of a customer.

She feels like apologizing.  

Meanwhile, Sarah grits her teeth and subtly sneaks glances at the woman she’s considered her mother for years. Helena has always been a rough topic to talk about, now more than ever, and the last thing she wants is to uncoil the knotted mess that is her life with and without Helena. No, she has to bear that weight on her own.

She feels like apologizing.

Instead, they sit opposite each other and say nothing at all.

**~~X~~**

The directions led to a wooded path that opened up after a half mile to the mouth of a grassy inlet. A brisk wind gallops through the patches of green and the tops of trees, making them shudder, before returning to the round belly of the lake. Before Cosima stands a six foot tall black gate with a cement arch for a doorway. The sign reads _Lakeside Cemetery_.

Cosima feels the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Feeling subdued, she walks with her hands trailing over the hump of each tombstone but keeps her pace respectfully on the dirt path designated beside the row of graves. The tombstones are in desperate need for care: a few stand crookedly in the ground, as if partially knocked from their post, and long sprouts of grass overwhelm each grave; overall the place is overrun with withered flowers, cracked slates, and faded names of forgotten corpses. _So, this is death_.

Why bother with a gravesite if it only exhibits their slow fade from the world?                         

A few rows ahead she spots a fresh bundle of flowers (only a week old) in a glass vase beside a tombstone; most of the weeds have been cleared and the slate appears hold a polished gleam. Cosima paces past the old tombstones and stops at the feet of the clean grave. The array of flowers have been be put together meticulously, and she can imagine the hands fretting over the position and color coordination, making sure everything is right. Two yellow lilies are in the center with buttery petals that curl back like the tongue of a yawning cat. Surrounding them is the red-and-white fray of several acacias.  

She glances at the name while absent-mindedly fiddling with the flowers.

A small frown forms between her eyebrows and her hands fall limply by her side. Her eyes pass over the name several times.

_Rest in Peace_

_Cosima Niehaus._

A haze expands over her mind slowly and obscures the letters as a morning fog turns a friend into a silhouette. She considers walking away—vaguely realizing that the day has turned unexpectedly onto foreign ground—but a sharp pain concentrates behind her eyes and keeps her focused on the dates carved into the stone.

_Birth: March 1984_

_Death: December 2009_

There is importance to these dates, as well as the elegantly engraved name, because they coincide perfectly with her.

But she can’t figure out the reason behind it yet. Why would someone simulate her own grave?  Who would go through so much trouble as to pick out a fresh bouquet of flowers? For what: intimidation or revenge? Cosima Niehaus is a simple PhD student working for a degree in evolutionary development, a rather small field in this town with very few toes to step on.

It is possible that Delphine is behind this. Cosima is a person made of deductions from start to finish and she considers every possibility, even when it hurts. The fact is this: Delphine moved out of their apartment in record time and is either living alone or with someone else. Perhaps Cosima had been too sick to remember the venue change (as well as the change of her own outfit, from hospital gown to fancy clothes). Obviously there are a few gaps in memory that are coming to play, but she doesn’t know what could have happened in such a short amount of time. It’s true that their last meeting wasn’t altogether merry, but that was more the circumstances than anything; even now, she can barely remember what happened despite having run through it a million times.

She was in the hospital and had been there for a long time without improvement, but she was allowed visitors. Delphine was at her bedside squeezing her hand and smiling, but her optimism never quite reached her eyes.

“ _I’m here, Darling. Please stay with me_ ,” she whispered through her smile. She remembered looking at her teeth, gleaming like pearls, and wondering why her voice was so raw and cracked. As if she’d been crying.  

“ _I’m ‘ere…_ ,” She slurred back, but her eyelids were so heavy. She felt so tired; all she had wanted to do was close her eyes.

Beads of sweat form along her forehead as her body apparently realizes something she has yet to understand. She wishes the ground would stop pitching beneath her feet.

It hits her with a sudden clarity when she looks at her hands and finds them visibly and uncontrollably shaking.

_Rest in Peace_

_Cosima Niehaus._

**~~ X ~~**

The silver mirror is much older than when she remembered picking it out.  At once she notices the two dark spots tainting the glass and a few splotches of mascara. _Silly Sarah_ , she thinks and laughs to herself.  

There are sure to be more flaws that she could spot out, but she can’t stand to look in the mirror much longer. She turns the glass around so that the faint reflective light lands on the apartment door and runs her palm across the smooth frame. Sarah will help her pick out the flaws later.

She hates her face and its mere copy of something genuine. God had made right in Sarah’s face, but then he tried to copy her. The result is this:  sallow skin, gaunt cheeks, and a smile like jagged pieces of broken glass. Helena has never looked right—not one day in her life.

At least she recognized her faults early on, unlike the others (whose faces don’t even compare, but the attempt still shows). She was able to curl her hair and dye it, and so allow Sarah to feel unhindered by their hideous comparison.

Her back holds most of the weight of her admonishments, and she was beginning to run out of room when she met another replica. At first she was angry, but then she realized that she wouldn’t have to carry the weight of her sin alone. They could share the blame and the admonishments, she thought, but the other one had been weak.

But that’s all in the past.

It had been difficult finding her sister again, but she had managed it by searching every directory by the phone books and local shops until she found a recent one that listed Sarah Manning. 

When Sarah gets back everything will be okay again. Helena will give the glass back to her sister and forget about the other faces. She will continue to carry the weight alone, and everything will be okay.

Sarah will be glad to see her again, and everything will be okay.

Everything will be okay.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts:  
> Sarah and Helena were 21 in 2005 (9 years ago)  
> Cosima died in 2009 at age 25 (5 years ago)  
> The current year is 2014


End file.
